The field of the disclosure relates generally to payment transactions, and, more particularly, to facilitating a multi-party payment transaction that includes a cardholder purchasing a product from a merchant on behalf of a buyer wherein the cardholder makes the purchase using a payment card associated with the merchant.
Customer loyalty is one critical factor of the success of any business. To ensure that customers choose to return to a particular merchant, many merchants offer co-branded payment cards and/or private label payment cards. A merchant who offers one of these merchant payment cards may incentivize customers to utilize the merchant payment card at the merchant's business by offering discounts on merchandise, giving out rewards points redeemable for items of value, or any combination thereof. For example, a merchant specializing in the sale of electronics may provide a merchant payment card to customers and offer a 20% discount for purchases made with the payment card. Therefore, a customer associated with the particular merchant payment card of the merchant, hereinafter referred to as a “cardholder,” may purchase a television that would generally cost $1,000 dollars for only $800 dollars.
However, not all customers may have the ability or desire to acquire a merchant payment card for the particular merchant from whom they wish to purchase an item. These customers, hereinafter referred to as “buyers,” are not associated with the merchant payment card for the particular merchant, but may still wish to take advantage of the benefits offered by the merchant payment card. As merchant payment cards have become more popular, buyers may have multiple merchant payment cards available to them, but be unable to comfortably keep track of them. Buyers may additionally be unable to generate a credit history for multiple merchant payment cards. In other circumstances, a buyer may have sufficient funds to make a purchase, but not have acceptable credit to be approved for the merchant payment card.
In addition, cardholders may not be receiving any value from their merchant payment card. For example, a cardholder may have acquired a merchant payment card for a particular purchase, and utilized the card relatively infrequently since that time. Currently, cardholders may have significant credit available to purchase items from the merchant, but no need or desire to do so.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a systems and methods for facilitating a transaction wherein a cardholder purchases an item from a merchant on behalf of a buyer using a merchant payment card. In such systems and methods, the buyer receives some of the savings made available by the merchant payment card, without the need to acquire his or her own merchant payment card. In addition, the cardholder receives some value for purchasing an item on behalf of a buyer using the merchant payment card of the cardholder.